
lass 



Book. 



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CiJFXRIGRT DEPOSm 



RELIGION AND 
THE SCHOOL 



By 

EMIL CARL WILM 

Professor of Philosophy in Boston University 
Lecturer in Philosophy, Wellesley College 




THE ABINGDON PRESS 

NEW YORK CINCINNATI 



\ ^-i "^ 



' ficy"^ 



Copyright, 1918, by 
EMIL CARL WILM 



V 



MAR 25 1918 



©CI.A494230 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Preface 5 

I 

Alleged Difficulties of the Religious 

Education Problem 7 ^ 

II 

The Materials of Religious Training 14 

III 

Moral Contents of the Studies. , . . . 18 

Two Types of Studies 19 

The Sciences 20 

The Humanities 27 

Professor James on Book Learning. . 28 

The Greek View 33 

The Theories of Schiller 35 

Physical and Manual Training 37 

Specifically Religious Materials.. . . 39 

The Systematic Teaching of Ethics . 43 

The Discipline of the School 44 

The Personality of the Teacher 46 

How THE School Can Cooperate with 

THE Church 49 

Bibliography 53 



PREFACE 

The following essay contains the gist 
of a view of religious education which 
has become increasingly clear to me in 
several years of consideration of the 
subject. I do not claim for this view 
any special novelty or originality, but 
I think it a true view, and one which the 
progress of time and tolerance will vin- 
dicate. I have expressed the same mat- 
ters in other connections, especially in 
two recent books of mine, The Problem 
of Religion, and The Culture of Reli- 
gion, where the reader will find a 
deeper justification of my position, in 
a larger context of philosophical and 
educational theory, if he should care 
for it. I have prepared this brief ex- 
cerpt and summary in the hope of pre- 
senting the matter to a larger audience 
than the above-mentioned books would 
be likely to reach. 

E. C. WiLM. 

Boston, August, 1917. 

5 



^^tLEGED Difficulties of the Reli- 
gious Education Problem 

The problem of religion in public 
education, altbough doubtless of first- 
rate- importance, is frequently felt to 
be one of considerable difficulty. While 
it seems clear, on the one hand, that 
religious ideas and institutions have 
been of too great significance in the cul- 
tural history of the race for the school 
wholly to absolve itself of the duty of 
introducing the child to this part of 
his social inheritance, grave and insur- 
mountable difficulties are often believed 
to exist in the way of introducing the 
subject of religion into the public 
school. These difficulties seem to me to 
be largely gratuitous and avoidable. 
They are created, on the one hand, by a 
somewhat stiff and one-sided concep- 
tion of religion itself, and, on the other. 



RELIGION AND THE SCHOOL 

by an obsolete view of the proper 
methods of reHgious instruction and 
training. With the disposition of these 
initial difficulties, the problem of reli- 
gion in education will largely solve it- 
self. 

Let us make these points somewhat 
clearer. By religion was formerly and 
^ still is frequently meant a system of 
special theological dogmas, and by reli- 
gious education the inculcation of these 
dogmas by more or less didactic 
methods of instruction. The older- 
fashioned methods of "confessional" 
and catechetical instruction, such as has 
obtained for many generations in Eu- 
rope, for example, illustrates both the 
matter and the manner of traditional 
religious instruction in its most typical 
(and one is tempted to say, virulent) 
form. Now, from the point of view of 
the state, which recognizes and protects 
equally all religious sects, with their dif- 
fering theologies, the prohibition by the 
state of public instruction in any given 



RELIGION AND THE SCHOOL 

system of theology or sectarian doctrine 
is evidently the only possible course. 
Even if this legal difficulty did not exist, 
it is highly questionable whether any 
agreement would be possible as to what 
the doctrinal basis of a common religious 
curriculum should be. Each of the 
numberless divisions of organized reli- 
gion possesses a more or less unique sys- 
tem of religious beliefs which it regards 
as valid, other systems being held or 
assumed to represent deviations from 
this norm.^ In addition, moreover, to 

* Constitutional provisions forbidding sectarian in- 
struction in the public schools, or the appropriation of 
public funds for the purposes of sectarian religious 
instruction, exist in forty-six states in the United 
States, while additional legal enactments to the same 
effect exist in twenty-six. State supreme court de- 
cisions have been handed down on thirty cases, and 
while there exists considerable dissent among these 
opinions, thirteen of the thirty favoring in a general 
way the religious ideal in education, the trend of 
judicial opinion seems clearly and overwhelmingly to 
support the exclusion of dogmatic sectarian instruction 
from the public school system, the particular decisions 
favoring religion in the schools turning on points not 
involving direct religious instruction, but the right 
to conduct general religious exercises including the 
reading of the Bible, to enforce decorum during such 
exercises and the like. See, for a typical illustration 
of this type of decision, Billard vs. Board of Educa- 
tion, Supreme Court of Kansas (76 Pacific Reporter, 

d 



RELIGION AND THE SCHOOL 

the different sectarian bodies, there is 
a large and increasing body of thought- 
ful men and women who have ceased 
to regard any of the traditional formu- 
lations of rehgious belief, as they stand, 
as any longer expressive, and who feel 
considerable hesitation in having their 
children indoctrinated with ideas and 
beliefs which they will in their maturity 
be almost certain radically to recast, or 
even entirely to discard. Religions and 
religious sects, in other words, teach 
beliefs which are of wide-reaching meta- 
physical import, and carry numberless 
theoretical implications, which are from 
the point of view of modern scholarship 
often of a doubtful or controversial 
character. 

From the point of view of the educa- 
tor, however, the principal reason 
against the teaching of dogmas, in the 



p. 422). Compare for a general summary of the legal 
status of religious education in the United States, 
S. W. Brown, The Secularization of American Educa- 
tion, Teachers College, Columbia University Con- 
tributions to Education, No. 49. 

10 



RELIGION AND THE SCHOOL 

sense of ready-made truths, is not legal, 
nor philosophical, but pedagogical. The 
most serious blunder of all religious 
education in the past has been that it 
has sought to convey to the pupil for- 
mally and didactically certain abstract 
theological ideas for which there was 
nothing whatever corresponding in his 
own personal experience. The profes- 
sions of faith we have often exacted of 
children have been professions not of 
their own faith, but of the faith of some 
theologian long since dead. It is, of 
course, the same blunder that we have 
committed in all other branches. Teach- 
ing everywhere has been too formal, too 
didactic, too direct; everywhere has it 
furnished the child too exclusively with 
words, and too little with experiences; 
everywhere has it sought too much to 
convey information, and made too little 
use of the child's own activities in obser- 
vation and inference. Good teaching, 
especially in the elementary branches, 

must proceed from the known to the 

H 



RELIGION AND THE SCHOOL 

unknown, from the concrete to the ab- 
stract, from the empirical to the ra- 
tional, from facts to principles.^ Reli- 
gion, ever conservative, has notoriously 
reversed this order. Is it not high time 
we were applying to the most important 
and difficult of educational activities 
those principles and methods which have 
borne such rich fruit in other branches? 
We must above all see to it that the 
child is furnished the concrete data out 
of which he will, with proper assistance, 
construct a religious view of the world 
which shall be in some genuine sense his 
own, instead of requiring him to learn 
by rote abstract formulas which his ex- 
perience has not enabled him to assimi- 
late. Religion not only should be, but 
to a large extent must be, the normal 
outgrowth of the various experiences, 
scientific or otherwise, of life as a whole. 



2 For a classical presentation of the "natural" method 
of instruction, see Herbert Spencer's Education, a 
work which is still as convincing and sound, on many 
points of educational principle and method, as when 
it was written. 

12 



RELIGION AND THE SCHOOL 

A religious view of the world, if it is to 
be more than an external accretion, to 
be sloughed off at the first rude touch 
at the hands of science or of philo- 
sophical reflection, must be in some 
genuine sense the result, not of dog- 
matic teaching or authoritative pre- 
scription, but of the ideas and experi- 
ences gained from the observation of 
nature and of men, from the study of 
literature and of science, and of the in- 
telligent assimilation of these inevitable 
materials of our spiritual culture. We 
must not only modernize our methods 
of religious instruction, but carry the 
spirit of religion also into secular educa- 
tion, and seek to ehcit from the teaching 
materials pecuhar to it their unique 
spiritual and ethical possibilities and 
significance. If we do not, we must be 
prepared to expect that religion will re- 
main a mere department of the child's 
life, a mere addition, destined to drop 
away as soon as the child passes out 
from under the immediate influence of 

13 



RELIGION AND THE SCHOOL 

his religious guardians. If, on the other 
hand, the religious life is based on the 
solid rock of the child's experience, as 
gained in life and through his studies, 
nothing will be able to shake it from 
its secure foundations. It will have be- 
come an organic part of life itself, and 
it can never be disengaged from the 
other genuine elements of the child's 
culture so long as life itself remains. 



II 

The Materials of Religious 
Training 

We have arrived at an interesting 
point of view from which to regard the 
whole problem of the relation of the 
public school to rehgion, and to religious 
education. If the question is asked. 
What is the Lernstof^, what are the 
proper materials and instruments of 
religious culture? the answer is, Every- 
thing! History, nature study, litera- 

14 



RELIGION AND THE SCHOOL 

ture, the fine arts, mathematics, 
manual and industrial training, as well 
as the more strictly religious materials, 
the history of reHgions, religious art and 
literature, anything, in short, which will 
help the boy to find himself, which will 
fashion and reenforce his ideals and 
raise the tone and efiiciency of his life. 
It is a mischievous view, a part of our 
mediaeval tradition, that the more we 
know about the universe the more god- 
less we become. If God is anywhere, 
he is in his world, and if we are to find 
him anywhere, we must seek him in the 
world which he has made, as this is re- 
vealed to us in our experience. As a 
recent writer has forcefully said, we 
must comprehend the fact "that the 
spiritual life is not apart from the 
natural life and in antagonism to it, but 
that the spirit interpenetrates all life 
and that all life is of the spirit."^ Our 

3 Nicholas Murray Butler, in Principles of Religious 
Education, p. 18. See also, for a masterly presentation 
of the general idea of immanence. Professor Bowne's 
little work. The Immanence of God, which seems to 

15 



RELIGION AND THE SCHOOL 

whole system of education is likely to 
be a comparative failure unless we 
recognize this principle. If, on the other 
hand, we fully adopt it and act upon 
it, we can, I believe, prove to the 
world that the public educational sys- 
tem, with its wide and varied curricu- 
lum, is an instrument of surpassing 
promise for our whole social and re- 
ligious life. 

It is gratifying to beheve that the 
view suggested here regarding the rela- 
tion of the school to morality and reli- 
gion is one which is thoroughly ap- 
proved by public opinion, as well as by 
the judgment of the best educational 
experts. Whatever the desire of par- 
ticular individuals may be, it is certain 
that the mass of people do not want a 
system of public schools which will leave 
out of account the development of 
character, or which will be actively, or 



me to remain one of the classical expressions of the 
fundamental idea presented here, in a form intelligible 
even to the nonphilosophical reader. 

16 



RELIGION AND THE SCHOOL 

even negatively, irreligious. If the pub- 
lic schools are "godless," "pagan," and 
"madly perverted," as some have as- 
serted, it is certainly not the wish of 
the public that they should be. The 
resolutions passed by the National Edu- 
cation Association in 1905 are indicative 
of the opinion of professional educators 
upon this important topic. "The As- 
sociation regrets the revival in some 
quarters of the idea that the conmion 
school is a place for teaching nothing 
but reading, spelling, writing, and 
ciphering ; and takes this occasion to de- 
clare that the ultimate object of popu- 
lar education is to teach children to live 
righteously, healthily, and happily, and 
that to accomplish this object it is essen- 
tial that every school inculcate the love 
of truth, justice, purity, and beauty 
through the study of biography, history, 
ethics, natural history, music, drawing, 
and the manual arts. . . . The build- 
ing of character is the real aim of the 
schools, and the ultimate reason for the 

17 



RELIGION AND THE SCHOOL 

expenditure of millions for their main- 
tenance."^ 



Ill 

The moral and religious influences 
of the school may be classified as having 
their origin (1) in the studies them- 
selves, (2) in the discipline of the school, 
and (3) in the personality of the 
teacher. I shall discuss these in the 
order mentioned. 

Moral Contents of the Studies 

It is, of course, wholly impossible, 
with the space at our disposal, to treat 
in any adequate manner the large and 
important subject of the ethical and 
rehgious implications of the various 
branches of the school curriculum. To 
trace out completely the full effect upon 
the mind and character of the various 
school studies would require a volume 

* Compare Reports R. E. A., Education and National 
Character, p. 168. 

18 



RELIGION AND THE SCHOOL 

by itself. No treatment of the subject 
of the relation of the public school to 
rehgious education would be complete, 
however, which did not contain some 
reference to this subject. 

Two Types of Studies 

The various branches of the school 
curriculum, regarded from a moral 
point ^f view, fall naturally into two 
great classes. They either primarily de- 
fine and develop the pupil's purposes 
and ideals, or they primarily equip him 
with the physical ability, the knowledge 
and the mechanical skill necessary to 
carry these purposes into execution. 
Their aim is either ethical idealism or 
ethical efficiency. Now, the public 
school furnishes both these important 
elements of human culture, and when 
rightly used has abundant power to 
make men both more noble and more 
efficient. What we mainly need is 
teachers who have a true conception of 

19 



RELIGION AND THE SCHOOL 

their mission, and of the vast possibih- 
ties of the studies they are called upon 
to teach. 

The Sciences 

The three leading branches of natural 
science, namely, physics, chemistry, and 
biology, perhaps occupy the first place 
in the whole list of studies making for 
social efficiency. It is through these 
that men learn how to contribute in 
various ways to human progress and 
betterment. The vast advances in all 
lines of social and economic activity, 
which the present generation has wit- 
nessed, and the thousands of inventions 
which have contributed so largely to 
make life more comfortable and effec- 
tive, have in a large measure been due 
to the applications of one kind or an- 
other of the laws and principles of 
natural science. The factory, the steam- 
boat, the railway, the stearri plow, the 
reaper, the sewing machine, the electric 
motor and electric light, the telegraph 

20 



RELIGION AND THE SCHOOL 

and the telephone, the airship, the gaso- 
hne engine, anihne dyes, the enrichment 
of exhausted soils, the discovery of valu- 
able drugs, the marvelous improvement 
of species of plants and animals, the 
discovery of the laws of health and dis- 
ease, of the influences of heredity and 
environment — ^these are only a few of 
the contributions to civilization which 
the three sciences named above have 
made. 

Nor is the contribution of science to 
the education of youth merely instru- 
mental and technical. It is often specu- 
lative and spiritual as well. Through his 
study of science the youth often gets his 
first glimpses of the unity of nature, and 
of the existence everywhere in nature of 
beauty and order. In the never-failing 
constancy of her processes he will per- 
haps receive his first confirmation of the 
truth which has often met his ear, but 
which has so far received little inward 
response, that God is indeed "the same 
yesterday, to-day, and forever." 

21 



RELIGION AND THE SCHOOL 

In the third place, there is perhaps 
no school discipline, unless it is mathe- 
matics, which, if earnestly pursued, is 
so conducive to the fundamental traits 
of truthfulness and perseverance; to 
truthfulness, because the lack of cor- 
respondence between word and fact, 
which constitutes untruth, is here too 
obvious to escape detection ; to persever- 
ance, because the results to be attained 
in science are specific and definite, ren- 
dering it difficult to rest satisfied with 
a wrong or even a partial result. 

The view of the moral and religious 
possibilities of scientific studies pre- 
sented here is, of course, a compara- 
tively modern one. It was not until the 
middle, or even the latter part, of the 
nineteenth century that the mediasval 
distrust of science gave way to a more 
natural and hopeful view of its cultural 
possibilities.^ And there are not want- 

5 Compare Monroe, A Text-Book in the History 
of Education, chapter XII. For the history and 
progress of modern science, see also Buckley, A Short 
History of Natural Science; Smith, History of Science 

22 



RELIGION AND THE SCHOOL 

ing men to-day who retain a lingering 
fear that the study of science will neces- 
sarily have a hurtful influence upon reli- 
gion. 

The objections to science usually as- 
sume one or the other of two forms. It 
is often said that the study of science 
tends to impress the student with the 
importance of the material and mechan- 
ical aspects of nature, so that he will 
come to regard its purposive and spirit- 
ual aspects as subordinate, or even quite 
neghgible. This result does sometimes 
doubtless occur, particularly in the more 
advanced branches of physical science. 
My own opinion is that this view of the 
world is one-sided and inadequate, and 
that the enlarging conceptions of nature 
due to the labors of science have not 
been of such a character as to invalidate 
the interpretation of nature as a funda- 
mentally purposive and spiritual sys- 

in the Nineteenth Century. For the application of 
science, Beckman, History of Inventions. For the 
relation of science to conservatism, A. D. White, A 
History of the Warfare of Science with Theology. 

23 



RELIGION AND THE SCHOOL 

tern. And if the teacher knows his 
business, there is Kttle occasion to fear 
that the result upon the student's mind 
above referred to will actually occur .^ 

A second possible danger is that the 
very complete explanation of the phe- 

^ The idea that the reign of natural law is incom- 
patible with the existence in nature of purpose is a 
very curious one, and it is nothing short of amazing 
how it has ever gained the wide currency which it 
appears to enjoy among intelligent people. It is about 
as if one should maintain that because hats are made 
by machinery (the illustration, I think, is Professor 
James's), they cannot on that account fit human 
heads, or that because railway engines are propelled 
by steam power they cannot get anywhere! A very 
little reflection, however, will make it sufficiently 
evident that the only condition under which it would 
become impossible to make hats fit heads, and to 
make trains arrive at their intended destinations, is 
for natural law to become inoperative, so that steel 
would cease to be rigid, water cease to turn into steam 
when heated, etc. Then all interests alike would 
remain unrealized, all purposes unfulfilled, and life 
itself become a sheer impossibility. Indeed, the more 
one reflects on the matter, the more clearly one feels 
that the one most important argument for theism 
which can be produced is the . uniformity of nature, 
the existence throughout it of rationality and order. 
That the ground is firm under our feet, that water 
slakes and fire burns, that bodies gravitate, that the 
sun rises and sets, and the seasons return — that nature, 
in short, is without shadow or turning — this is the 
prime condition on which the universe can be either 
rational or good. For an elaboration of this view, see 
A. C. Fraser, The Philosophy of Theism, and my own 
book. The Problem of Religion, especially chapters 
4, 5, and 8. 

24 



RELIGION AND THE SCHOOL 

nomena of nature which science offers 
will obliterate the sense of wonder in 
the presence of the universe, and thus 
tend to destroy the sense of reverence 
which is so central to the emotional re- 
sponses of rehgion. Aside, however, 
from the inadequacy of the mechanical 
type of explanation which science ex- 
clusively employs, and to which I have 
already referred, complete mechanical 
explanation, even, is surely nothing 
more than a scientific ideal, from whose 
reaHzation science is to-day, and always 
will be, infinitely removed. Whether 
the student fully comprehends the im- 
portant distinction between mechanical 
and teleological or purposive explana- 
tion, he surely can, and usually does, 
understand the greatly restricted scope 
of even mechanical explanation. He 
will hourly have occasion to notice that 
what science understands is but an in- 
finitesimally small part of the vast areas 
of nature which remain unexplored and 
ununderstood. As the late Professor 

25 



RELIGION AND THE SCHOOL 

Paulsen has said, "forsooth we must 
confess that, remarkable though the 
progress of science has been during the 
last few centuries, it has utterly failed 
to solve the great riddle of existence. 
Indeed, the mystery seems to have 
deepened and to have grown more won- 
derful. The more we study the uni- 
verse, the more immeasurable seem its 
depths, the more inexhaustible the var- 
iety and wealth of its forms. How 
simple and intelligible was the world of 
Aristotle and St. Thomas ; into what in- 
conceivable abysses astronomy and 
physics have since led us! The billions 
of miles, years and vibrations with which 
these sciences reckon carry the imagina- 
tion to the dizzy edge of infinity. With 
what profound secrets of organization, 
development, and existence biology sees 
herself confronted, now that she has 
learned to manipulate the microscope 
and has called evolutionary science to 
her aid! Back to what infinite begin- 
nings historical research stretches the 

26 



RELIGION AND THE SCHOOL 

life of man, which a few centuries 
ago seemed so clearly and distinctly 
bounded by the creation on one side, and 
the judgment day on the other! So far 
is science from having transformed the 
world into a simple problem of arith- 
metic. Science does not carry the think- 
ing man to the end of things, she merely 
gives him an inkling of the illimitable- 
ness of the universe. She arouses in 
those who serve her with a pure heart, 
not pride, but feelings of deep humility 
and insignificance. These are the feel- 
ings which inspired Kant and Newton, 
Goethe, too, is full of this thought: the 
greatest blessing that can befall a think- 
ing man is to fathom what can be 
fathomed, and silently to adore the un- 
fathomable."^ 

The Humanities 

The ethical and religious value of his- 
tory and literature lies in their fitness 

' A System of Ethics, p. 431. 

27 



RELIGION AND THE SCHOOL 

to define ideals and purposes, and thus 
to give direction to the will. Without 
attention to this side of personality, the 
school may easily degenerate into an in- 
stitution for the training of charlatans. 
The good will which Kant lauded so ex- 
travagantly is not, 'indeed, sufficient 
when it is divorced from efficiency, but 
it is perhaps preferable to efficiency 
when this is divorced from the good will. 
What is needed is the union of ethical 
disposition and ethical efficiency, of the 
moral will and the intellectual and 
physical ability to carry out the pur- 
poses of the moral will. The training 
of the intellect is indeed an important 
thing. But if intellectual training is 
aimed at to the exclusion of the molding 
of the moral character, the result may 
easily be disastrous. 

Professor James on Book Learning 

No one has recognized this more 
frankly and expressed it more pun- 

28 



RELIGION AND THE SCHOOL 

gently than the late Professor James. 
"The old notion that book learning can 
be a panacea for the vices of society lies 
pretty well shattered to-day. ... If 
we were asked that disagreeable ques- 
tion. What are the bosom vices of the 
level of culture which our land and day 
have reached? we should be forced, I 
think, to give the still more disagreeable 
answer, that they are swindling and 
adroitness, and the indulgence of 
/ swindling and adroitness, and cant, and 
sympathy with cant — ^natural fruits of 
that extraordinary idealization of suc- 
cess in the mere outward sense of *get- 
ting there,' and getting there on as big 
a scale as we can, which characterizes 
our generation. What was reason given 
man for, some satirist has asked, except 
to enable him to invent reasons for what 
he wants to do ! We might say the same 
of education. We see college graduates 
on every side of every pubHc question. 
Some of Tammany's stanchest sup- 
porters are Harvard men. Harvard 

39 



RELIGION AND THE SCHOOL 

men defend our treatment of our Fili- 
pino allies as a masterpiece of policy 
and morals. Harvard men, as jour- 
nalists, pride themselves on producing 
copy for any side that may enlist them. 
There is not a public abuse for which 
some Harvard advocate may not be 
found."« 

What Professor James says of his 
own university may be said of every col- 
lege and university in the land. And 
this is not an argument against colleges 
and universities. It is only an argu- 
ment to show that intellectual training 
by itself cannot be relied upon to accom- 
plish single-handed the task of com- 
pletely fitting a man for his work in the 
world. The clearer understanding, in- 
deed, of the materials and means where- 
with to supplement intellectual train- 
ing so as to fashion character and to 
awaken ethical enthusiasm seems to me 
to be incomparably the most important 
task which American education has be- 

8 Memories and Studies, pp. 350-352. 

30 



RELIGION AND THE SCHOOL 

fore it. It is often said that the object 
of an education is to enable a man to 
earn his living; frequently the aim is 
said to be social efficiency. But a man 
needs not so much to be taught how to 
live, but how to live at his highest. It 
is evident also that a person may be 
highly efficient, in the narrow sense of 
possessing a high degree of executive 
and productive skill, and yet entirely 
fail. He realizes, perhaps, what he 
aims at, but he aims at the wrong 
objects. He is successful in the nar- 
row sense of accomplishing what he 
set out to accomplish; he fails com- 
pletely if we judge him from the higher 
point of view of ideal aims and values. 
History and literature abound in illus- 
trations of such "failures in success." 
The failure lies not in the execution but 
in the aim. Every man who deliberately 
sets out to accomplish an unworthy end 
and who reaches it, is a living example 
of our theme. Education was never 
more successful than now in rendering 

31 



RELIGION AND THE SCHOOL 

men efficient in the narrow sense of the 
word. Its great need is to make men 
also just. 

The great sources of our ideals seem 
to me to be history, and, to an even 
greater degree, literature and other 
branches of fine art, using these terms 
broadly to stand for the whole realm of 
the imaginative and the ideal, as this has 
found illustration through human 
media. Unlike science, literature and 
art present to us, not what is, but what 
ought to be. They do not give us a 
literal transcription of the actual, but 
an imaginative transformation of the 
actual into the shapes of the ideal. 
What never was on land or sea, what 
existed only in the mind of the prophet 
and the heart of the seer, that literature 
and art reveal to us. Science opens to 
us the wonderful realm of fact ; art the 
still more wonderful realm of aspira- 
tion. Literature is too often regarded 
merely as a sentimental pastime, as reli- 
gion is too often regarded as a stereo- 

32 



i 



RELIGION AND THE SCHOOL 

typed tradition. But these views do 
injustice to the true nature and signifi- 
cance of these great interests. If litera- 
ture and rehgion were merely a kind of 
pastime and an outworn tradition, they 
would not have survived the advances 
of modern science, and the matter-of- 
fact mood of our modern time. But 
they have survived, and are held as pre- 
cious, because they are the citadels of our 
spiritual strength ; because they save us 
from the commonplace of fact, routine, 
and custom, revealing to us values not 
yet realized, and experiences of strength 
and love not yet attained. 

The Greek Yiew 

The sure instinct of the ancient Greek 
served him here, as it did in other de- 
partments. To secure the symmetrical 
development of all the human powers 
he sent the young to two schools, the 
palaestra, or wrestling school, and the 
didaskaleion, or music school, to the 

33 



RELIGION AND THE SCHOOL 

former for the training of the body, to 
the latter for the training of the mind, 
and the cultivation of the gesthetic and 
moral personality. Literature and 
music were studied with a view directly 
to their influence on hfe; in order, as 
Plato says in the Protagoras, "that 
children may be more gentle and harmo- 
nious, and rhythmical, and so more 
fitted for speech and action ; for the life 
of man at every point has need of har- 
mony and rhythm." "Music," says 
Aristotle, in a remarkable passage which 
might have been taken from the modern 
Schiller, "brings harmony, first into the 
human being himself by putting an end 
to the conflict between his passions and 
his intelligent will, and then, as a con- 
sequence, into his relations with his fel- 
lows." 

It may not be out of place, although 
the passage is quite well known, to quote 
the testimony of one of the most emi- 
nent of modern scientists on the im- 
poverishing effect of neglecting the cul- 

34 



RELIGION AND THE SCHOOL 

ture of the aesthetic side of our nature. 
After deploring the loss of his early 
taste for poetry, pictures, and music, 
Darwin testifies that if he had to live 
his life over again he would make it a 
rule to read some poetry and listen to 
some music at least every week; "for 
perhaps," he says, "the parts of my 
brain now atrophied would thus have 
been kept alive through use. The loss 
of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and 
may possibly be injurious to the intel- 
lect, and more probably to the moral 
character, by enfeebling the emotional 
part of our nature." 

The Theories of Schiller 

In modern times the poet Schiller has 
insisted most forcibly upon the value of 
the fine arts as a means of moral educa- 
tion. The aid which Kant sought in 
religion for the transformation of the 
natural disposition, Schiller sought in 
art. It would be impossible here to go 

35 



RELIGION AND THE SCHOOL 

into a detailed discussion of the subtle 
views of Schiller as to the precise way 
in which the transformation of the 
natural self into the moral self is accom- 
plished through this instrument ahty. 
His two main positions may be simply 
mentioned here. He thought of art as 
the most effective agency for restoring 
the soul to a state of inner unity and 
wholeness after it has been disrupted by 
the various one-sided employments of 
life. It is only out of the united and 
inwardly conciliated self that moral ac- 
tion of the highest type can spring. In 
the second place, Schiller thought of art 
as accomplishing a subtle refinement of 
the sensibilities which will result in the 
immoral, which is always sesthetically 
ugly, being repugnant to us, and in the 
moral, which is always gesthetically 
beautiful, attracting us. 

Whatever the precise process may 
be by which the child is morally refined 
in being subjected to the influences of 
beauty, we are beginning to realize that 

36 



RELIGION AND THE SCHOOL 

moral refinement and artistic refinement 
go hand in hand, and we are abeady 
doing much in schools to attain the 
artistic development of children through 
the influences, both conscious and un- 
conscious, of art. Through physical 
surroundings, through school furnish- 
ings and decorations, through literature 
and music, and in countless other ways 
are we to-day accomphshing the refine- 
ment of taste, and thus, incidentally, of 
the ethical and religious sensibilities of 
children in the public schools. Nothing 
promises more, I believe, for the future 
of our artistic and moral life than this 
enthusiastic devotion to the beautiful in 
school life. It is impossible to believe 
that anyone who has learned genuinely 
to love the beautiful can ever again be 
entirely ignoble. 

Physicai, and Manual Training 

Physical training, and the various 
forms of manual and industrial train- 

37 



RELIGION AND THE SCHOOL 

ing, also exercise a moral influence 
whose full importance has not always 
been recognized. To the question, "if 
you had a free hand, what reforms 
would you introduce in courses of study 
in order to increase the ethical efficiency 
of school training?" William James re- 
plied, "I should increase enormously 
the amount of manual and motor train- 
ing, relatively to book work, and not let 
the latter preponderate until the age 
of fifteen or sixteen."^ 

The reasons for the moral efficacy of 
motor training are many. (1) It has 
often been noticed that many forms of 
vice are the direct result of subnormal 
physical development, or physical weak- 
ness. A boy will tell a falsehood during 
a condition of fatigue when he will not 
do so in a normal condition. Many per- 
sons doubtless yield to various forms 
of temptation owing to a sheer lack 
of physical ability to withstand them. 

^ Quoted in Sadler, Moral Instruction and Training 
in Schools, p. 94. 

38 



RELIGION AND THE SCHOOL 

(2) Any form of physical activity is of 
intrinsic interest to children, and thus 
furnishes them with a healthful occupa- 
tion which has often been found to be 
of first importance to wholesome de- 
velopment. (3) Industrial and manual 
training equip the boy for earning his 
livelihood, and for performing various 
forms of social service, thus assignijig 
him his moral place in the community. 
(4) Not the least of the services ren- 
dered by these forms of training is the 
lesson they teach of the dignity of hu- 
man labor, and of the common man. 

Specifically Religious Materials 

The view put forward in the forego- 
ing that the whole curriculum and con- 
duct of the school must contribute in 
a large sense to the ends of ethical and 
religious culture, and the larger spirit- 
ual significance attributed to the so- 
called secular curriculum, is not meant 
to obscure the value of the more specific- 

39 



RELIGION AND THE SCHOOL 

ally religious literatures, the history of 
religious ideas, the poetry and music of 
devotion, and the other specific means 
of religious culture which the church 
and the school have from time imme- 
morial employed. The artificial exclu- 
sion of these materials from the schools 
is not only unpedagogical, revealing a 
defective sense of historical and psy- 
chological continuity in educational 
processes, but it is unjust to the pupil 
himself, who is thus deprived of one of 
the most interesting and significant 
parts of our common social inheritance. 
; Nothing, for example, is more strained 
and unnatural than the exclusion from 
the schools of instruction in bibhcal lit- 
erature, a practice in which a surprising- 
ly large nimiber of people concur and 
which they appear to accept as an edu- 
cational and practical necessity. "There 
is no such textbook," as G. Stanley Hall 
says, "of both the higher anthropology 
of races and of genetic psychology 
showing how the individual expands and 

40 



RELIGION AND THE SCHOOL 

approximates the dimensions of the 
ethnic consciousness." And what is 
true of the Bible appHes to all other 
rehgious materials whatsoever, which 
have historical and cultural significance. 
As an organic part of the race's culture, 
they are a part of the child's rightful 
inheritance, and it is only a fanciless 
religiosity or an equally hard and one- 
sided scientificism and secularism which 
is unable to recognize the school's mani- 
fest opportunity and duty in relation 
to the normal development of the stu- 
dent's spiritual culture. 

As regards the question of separate 
instruction in the Bible and similar 
materials in periods specially set aside 
for the purpose, it seems rather impor- 
tant that such instruction should be kept 
in the closest possible connection with 
the rest of the curriculum, and that the 
suggestion of the uniqueness of these 
materials should be as far as possible 
avoided. The history of rehgions and 
the great religious literatures of the 

41 



RELIGION AND THE SCHOOL 

world form an organic part of general 
history and literature; and the school, 
if it takes a large view of its function, 
will treat these objectively and impar- 
tially, just as it treats any other sub- 
ject. This has been almost uniformly 
done in the case of history, and there 
is less and less bias against the introduc- 
tion of such selections from the Hebrew 
and Christian Scriptures as are seen to 
have literary and general value. In 
fact, it is difficult to see how such 
materials are to be kept out of the 
school. Are we to exclude from the 
curriculum all literature containing reli- 
gious teachings? Then we should have 
to exclude practically the whole of Eng- 
lish literature. In the case of history 
it is equally evident that any attempt to 
exclude rigorously all historical facts 
which have a religious reference would 
do irreparable injury to the study of 
history. The history of religious ideas, 
movements, and institutions is so inex- 
tricably interwoven with general history 

42 



RELIGION AND THE SCHOOL 

that any attempt to separate general 
and religious history would result in the 
thorough mutilation of both. The same 
remarks apply to religious art, religious 
music, religious rites and usages, etc. 
These topics should be treated in their 
concrete cultural connections whenever 
the general topics of art, music, ritual, 
etc., come under consideration. I be- 
lieve they are generally so treated, and 
that without objection from any quar- 
ter. 

The Systematic Teaching or Ethics 

This is perhaps the place to say some- 
thing about the systematic teaching of 
ethics, courses in which have already 
been widely introduced into common 
and secondary schools. In spite of high 
authority to the contrary,^ ^ I am bound 
to believe that such systematic instruc- 
tion cannot but be of high value to stu- 
dents. A vast amount of private and 

^° See, for example, G. H. Palmer, Ethical and 
Moral Instruction in Schools. 

43 



RELIGION AND THE SCHOOL 

social immorality is clearly due to igno- 
rance, and would have been rendered 
impossible by forceful and timely in- 
struction. The question whether such 
instruction should be given in set les- 
sons, or whether the incidental method 
is preferable, does not seem to me to be 
capable of a categorical answer. Much 
depends upon the age of the pupil, but 
systematic instruction probably has ad- 
vantages over the incidental method at 
all ages. Such systematic instruction 
will, of coiu'se, not preclude the inci- 
dental enforcement of moral principle 
or truth whenever the occasion presents 
itself in the regular lessons or in con- 
nection with the discipline of the school. 

The Discipline of the School 

This brings us to the second great 
means of moral and religious influence 
in public education, the discipline of the 
school. There is perhaps no more effec- 
tive means of socializing the pupil 

44 



RELIGION AND THE SCHOOL 

than that intangible and evanescent 
but very soMd thing called the atmos- 
phere and tone of the school. By their 
tone, says WilMam James, are all things 
hmnan either lost or saved. It is 
through the corporate life of the school 
that the child learns discipline, honesty, 
deference for superiors, consideration 
for companions, the spirit of coopera- 
tion and fair play, habits of industry, 
orderliness, punctuality, and a hundred 
other traits which together make up the 
complete character. In fact, there is 
hardly a virtue in the whole catalogue 
of virtues for which the school does not 
afford adequate scope and exercise. 
We are ever inchned to stress the merits 
of the unusual, forgetting that life is 
mainly made up of very commonplace 
and ordinary happenings and duties. 
Carlyle tells of an artisan who broke the 
entire Decalogue with every stroke of 
his hammer. So it is possible, also, to 
keep the whole Decalogue in every 
homely deed, so it is honestly per- 

45 



RELIGION AND THE SCHOOL 

formed. The school has no more impor- 
tant duty than to train the young in 
scrupulousness and honesty in the per- 
formance of the small and apparently 
unimportant details of the school's daily 
task. 

The Peksonality of the Teacher 

The presupposition of all effective in- 
fluence, both through the studies and 
through the discipline of the school, is, 
of course, the personality of the teacher. 
Religion or irreligion will be present in 
the school just as surely as teachers are 
present. There are those rare charac- 
ters among teachers under whose magic 
touch the most intractable and unprom- 
ising material is transformed into gold, 
and, on the other hand, no matter how 
full of possibilities the studies and the 
opportunities are, they will fail to be 
realized if the teacher lacks earnestness, 
insight, and sympathy. The character 
of the teacher will reveal itself, first and 

46 



RELIGION AND THE SCHOOL 

foremost, in the industry, the care, and 
the enthusiasm with which he performs 
his own work. It goes without saying, 
of course, that the true teacher will con- 
duct all the work of the school in a seri- 
ous manner, and that ill-considered 
criticism of anything having either his- 
torical significance or scientific interest 
is entirely out of harmony with the pur- 
pose of the school. Intellectual pride 
is the most unscholarly of all intellectual 
attitudes, and no one who has not over- 
come it can lay claim to being a scholar 
in the best sense, still less a true teacher. 
Certainly, no teacher has done his work 
well who has not imparted to the stu- 
dent some conception of the vastness 
and the intricacy of the world in which 
he hves, and with it a sense of wonder, 
from which springs all wisdom, and of 
reverence, from which spring worship 
and love. 

The personal character of the teacher 
will, of course, count elsewhere than in 
the thoroughness and sincerity of the 

47 



RELIGION AND THE SCHOOL 

academic work. His personal attitude 
toward his pupils, his life and activity 
in the community, his attitude toward 
the social and moral issues of the school 
and the community as they arise from 
time to time, his tastes, his scholarship, 
his intellectual hospitality, all these will 
exercise a steady and pervasive influ- 
ence, an influence which will fre- 
quently determine career and destiny. 
The increasing emphasis which is to-day 
being placed upon the personality in the 
selection of teachers promises richly for 
the whole future of our schools. The in- 
culcation and enforcement of the ideals 
of right living and the moral regenera- 
tion of cities and nations does not de- 
pend primarily upon the church and 
courts of justice, which have to do with 
virtue and corruption, whose strength is 
the strength of years, but upon the home 
and the school, where life is new and 
ideals are plastic and where the influ- 
ences of teaching and example are most 
vivid and potent. 

48 



RELIGION AND THE SCHOOL 

How THE School Can Cooperate 

WITH THE ChUECH 

It remains to mention a number of 
ways in which the school can contribute 
more directly and specifically to the reli- 
gious training of the young, either in 
the school itself, or by practical and 
helpful cooperation with its sister insti- 
tution, the church. 

(1) Recognition of religion can be 
inoffensively accorded by simple reli- 
gious exercises in the school, either at 
the beginning or at some other conven- 
ient time of the school day. A vital in- 
terest in these exercises and the good 
tact and judgment of teachers will pre- 
vent them from becoming burdensome 
or perfunctory. When well conducted 
such exercises are extremely effective in 
creating an atmosphere friendly to reli- 
gion, and a spirit of reverence for sacred 
things. 

(2) The school can render substan- 
tial service to religious education 

49 



RELIGION AND THE SCHOOL 

through the participation of its officers 
and teachers in the actual work of Sun- 
day school supervision and instruction. 
There would be two main advantages in 
this. In the first place, the teachers 
would bring with them a natural apti- 
tude for teaching, classroom experience, 
and likely some professional training. 
Second, the plan would go far toward 
solving the problem of correlation be- 
tween the work of the public school and 
the Sunday school, the importance of 
which has been assumed in our whole 
treatment of the inseparable nature of 
secular and religious training. The 
regular teacher would be presumed to 
have an acquaintance with the pupil's 
other school studies and acquirements 
which the special reUgious teacher would 
naturally not possess. 

(3) Whether or not they take part 
in the actual work of Sunday school in- 
struction, teachers can do much for reli- 
gious education by encouraging in their 
pupils regular attendance upon Sunday 

50 



RELIGION AND THE SCHOOL 

school instruction, an indispensable con- 
dition, as every teacher knows, of effec- 
tive work along any line of school work. 
This is the more important as atten- 
dance upon religious instruction offered 
by churches cannot well be made com- 
pulsory, and must depend largely upon 
the conscientious discharge of their duty 
on the part of parents and teachers. 

(4) The pressing problem of atten- 
dance and discipline of the Sunday 
school can be partly solved through the 
school by according recognition for 
work done in the Sunday school through 
a specified amount of credit for pro- 
ficiency in religious and biblical sub- 
jects. An important initial step in this 
direction has recently been taken by the 
State Board of Education of North 
Dakota,^^ which in 1912 published a 
syllabus outlining a course in biblical 



" Also by the public schools of Gary, Indiana, and 
Greeley, Colorado. The States of Indiana, Michigan 
and Wyoming are reported also as considering similar 
plans. See for details Religious Education, vol. IX, 
pp. 306 and 389flf. 

51 



RELIGION AND THE SCHOOL 

study for the completion of which a half- 
credit out of the fifteen required for 
high school graduation was granted. 
While the teaching of the Bible courses 
is left to the Sunday school or other 
outside agency, standardization is se- 
cured through examinations which are 
given by the Board of Education. It is 
unnecessary to say that the official 
recognition thus given to religious in- 
struction is bound to dignify and stiffen 
the work of the Sunday school as noth- 
ing else could. In these various ways, 
then, the three problems which are often 
mentioned as the three main problems 
of Sunday school instruction — the se- 
curing of trained teachers, of regular 
attendance, and of proper standardiza- 
tion and discipline — ^would, through the 
generous cooperation of the school, get 
well under way toward solution. Inci- 
dentally, the unity of the educational 
organism, the indispensable condition of 
the spiritual integrity of the pupil, 
would be increasingly achieved, 

52 



RELIGION AND THE SCHOOL 



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Burton and Mathews, Principles and Ideals for the 
Sunday School. 

Butler, The Meaning of Education. 

Coe, Moral and Religious Education from the Psy- 
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Conway, Catholic Education in the United States, 
Ed. Rev., Feb., 1905. 

Doering and others, Konfessionelle oder weltliche 
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